| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe: Then, too, he was in a beautiful place, a consideration to
which his sensitive race was never indifferent; and he did enjoy
with a quiet joy the birds, the flowers, the fountains, the perfume,
and light and beauty of the court, the silken hangings, and pictures,
and lustres, and statuettes, and gilding, that made the parlors
within a kind of Aladdin's palace to him.
If ever Africa shall show an elevated and cultivated race,--and
come it must, some time, her turn to figure in the great drama
of human improvement.--life will awake there with a gorgeousness
and splendor of which our cold western tribes faintly have conceived.
In that far-off mystic land of gold, and gems, and spices, and
Uncle Tom's Cabin |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Glaucus/The Wonders of the Shore by Charles Kingsley: Which, like a bud compacted,
Their purple cups contracted;
And now in open blossom spread,
Stretch'd, like green anthers, many a seeking head.
And arborets of jointed stone were there,
And plants of fibres fine as silkworm's thread;
Yea, beautiful as mermaid's golden hair
Upon the waves dispread.
Others that, like the broad banana growing,
Raised their long wrinkled leaves of purple hue,
Like streamers wide outflowing.' - KEHAMA, xvi. 5.
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Louis Lambert by Honore de Balzac: purer, are the more genuine, must transcend the wail even of genius.
After sitting for a long time with his eyes fixed on a lime-tree in
the playground, Louis would say just a word; but that word would
reveal an infinite speculation.
"Happily for me," he exclaimed one day, "there are hours of comfort
when I feel as though the walls of the room had fallen and I were
away--away in the fields! What a pleasure it is to let oneself go on
the stream of one's thoughts as a bird is borne up on its wings!"
"Why is green a color so largely diffused throughout creation?" he
would ask me. "Why are there so few straight lines in nature? Why is
it that man, in his structures, rarely introduces curves? Why is it
Louis Lambert |
The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson: George by stark force, and one to Ardshiel by natural kindness)
offered him a better price than any Campbell in all broad
Scotland; and far he sent seeking them -- as far as to the sides
of Clyde and the cross of Edinburgh -- seeking, and fleeching,
and begging them to come, where there was a Stewart to be starved
and a red-headed hound of a Campbell to be pleasured!"
"Well, Alan," said I, "that is a strange story, and a fine one,
too. And Whig as I may be, I am glad the man was beaten."
"Him beaten?" echoed Alan. "It's little ye ken of Campbells, and
less of the Red Fox. Him beaten? No: nor will be, till his
blood's on the hillside! But if the day comes, David man, that I
Kidnapped |
